Woman reading a Bible while drinking coffee.

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Jael and the women in God’s narrative of humanity

March 15, 2023
“And then there is this other woman named Jael at the end of the story who kills the bad guy Sisera,” I say as I try to convey the whole story of Deborah to my 5-year-old. He is going to learn about Deborah in his Sunday School class this morning. But they are only focusing on Deborah, not the true (and unexpected) heroine that is Jael. For those unfamiliar to the story, Jael, a woman and a foreigner, will be the character who delivers Israel from Sisera by means of a tent peg to the forehead. I do not go into the gory details with my son. Not because I don’t think he should learn them, but I don’t want to already be “that” parent with “that” child pushing the boundaries of elementary school curriculum. Plenty of time for that later, as the child of a woman with a PhD in theology is bound to become over time.

I tell him about Jael because I feel that it’s important that my children learn about the undeniable importance of women in God’s narrative of humanity. In church so many of our sermons focus on Paul or David or Abraham. Perhaps Peter during Holy Week. There’s good chance that over the course of the year preachers will deliver a sermon about Mary, especially during Christmas, or Mary Magdalene, or Mary (there are so many Marys) and Martha. Perhaps Elizabeth, also during Advent. But what we lose is the glorious tapestry of the whole picture.

God continually and consistently moves the story along through the participation of women. The barren Sarah bears the first progeny of Israel (and must deal a lot with her husband’s many failings en route to that). Rebecca, underhandedly, shifts the blessing of Isaac onto Jacob. Jacob’s wife Leah, although unloved compared to Rachel, bears almost the entirety of the sons who will become the tribes of Israel. The midwives save Moses, who is then found by the Egyptian princess, rescued by his sister, and given back to his mother. These women are all critical characters, and we haven’t even gotten out of Genesis.

Perhaps the story of Jael is a bit much for a kindergartener, but to me, to leave her out is to omit a critical aspect of God’s working, a story that sidesteps the neat patriarchy that the world has been accustomed to since the beginning of time.
Despite the cultural unimportance of women, we would have no story of Israel without them. Over the course of the Old Testament, we are introduced to a cavalcade of other women, foreign women at that – Rahab, Ruth, Jael, the widow in the story of Elijah. God works with barren women – Samson’s mother, the Shunammite woman, Hannah. Women who are treated terribly – Tamar, the daughters of Lot, Dinah, Bathsheba, Delilah, the concubine in Judges 19. Women that we never learn the names of – the New Testament is full of women like that.

My list of women should not be taken as a list for the sake of lists. March is Women’s History Month and, as the church, we would be remiss to overlook the women in the Bible as many would have been overlooked in their time. Perhaps what is most remarkable is not that God chooses to work through women, but that these women mattered so much that they are included in the history of God’s working in the world. Perhaps the story of Jael is a bit much for a kindergartener, but to me, to leave her out is to omit a critical aspect of God’s working, a story that sidesteps the neat patriarchy that the world has been accustomed to since the beginning of time. I want my two-year-old daughter to grow up knowing her part of the family of God is just as important as any man’s.

“They didn’t talk about that other woman in class today, was she that important? Are you sure she was part of the story?” my son asks on our way home. I assure him that yes, Jael was a very important part of the story and that maybe his teachers only wanted to talk about Deborah. I’m disappointed but also proud that he knows Jael. It’s the small steps.

Dr. Claire Hein Blanton is an ordained Baptist minister in Houston, Texas. She received PhD in systematic theology and ethics from the University of Aberdeen.

The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of American Baptist Home Mission Societies.

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